carried out under
the superintendence chiefly of Dom Rivet. This was the _Histoire
Litteraire de la France_--a mighty work, which, after long interruption
by the Revolution and other causes, was taken up again, and has
proceeded steadily for many years, though it has not yet reached the
close of the middle ages. This work was part, and a very important part,
of a revival of the study of old French literature. The plan of the
Benedictines led them at first into the literature of mediaeval Latin.
But the works of the Trouveres, of their successors in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, and of the authors of the French Renaissance,
also received attention, scattered at first and desultory, but gradually
co-ordinating and regulating itself. La Monnoye, Lenglet-Dufresnoy, the
President Bouhier, and many others, collected, and in some cases edited,
the work of earlier times. The Marquis de Paulmy began a vast
_Bibliotheque des Romans_, for which the Comte de Tressan undertook the
modernising and reproducing of all the stories of chivalry. Tressan, it
is true, had recourse only to late and adulterated versions, but his
work was still calculated to spread some knowledge of what the middle
ages had actually done in matter of literature. La Curne de Sainte
Palaye devoted himself eagerly to the study of the language, manners,
and customs of chivalry. Barbazan collected the specially French product
of the Fabliau, and, with his successor Meon (who also edited the _Roman
du Renart_), provided a great corpus of lighter mediaeval literature for
the student to exercise himself upon. By degrees this revived literature
forced itself upon the public eye, and before the Republic had given
place to the Empire, it received some attention at the hands of
official teachers of literature who had hitherto scorned it. M. J.
Chenier, Daunou, and others, undertook the subject, and made it in a
manner popular; while towards the extreme end of the present period
Raynouard and Fauriel added the subject of Provencal literature to that
of the literature of Northern France, and helped to propagate the study
abroad as well as at home.

In the older fields the renown of France for purely classical
scholarship diminished somewhat as compared with the days of Huet,
Menage, Dacier, and the Delphin classics. The principal work of
erudition was either directed towards the so-called philosophy in its
wide sense of enquiry and speculation into politics and m